J. Leigh Garcia
@, screenprint and digital output, 20"x15", 2019
“I love using a variety of bright, expressive colors in my work to not only attract the attention of viewers, but also perpetuate the passion for color that my Mexican ancestors have spent millennia on.”
J. Leigh Garcia is an artist living and working in Kent, Ohio (USA). Her approach to color is whimsical, and her approach to printmaking is politically and socially conscious.
Leigh’s identity-based work is created with screen, relief, and intaglio printmaking techniques as well as sculpture, papermaking and installation. Currently she is working on exploring her relationship to undocumented immigration and Texas history as a biracial Latina.
Where do you reside between technical and intuitive in your work as an artist using color?
When planning for color in my prints, I tend to work more technically than intuitively. I often begin by making a series of colored pencil drawings where I block out shapes of color. I then look for ways in which I can balance hot/cool and bright/neutral colors in the composition.
Even when exploring serious subject matter, I feel that bright colors can be integrated to add contrast, sort of like adding a pinch of salt to your cookie dough.
Bendita Sea el Agua, screenprint with embroidery and punctured holes, 15"x15", 2019
Catching Flies, screenprint, relief print, rubber band, cardboard, 26"x3"x3", 2019
What cultural aspects of color are built into your work?
For thousands of years, my indigenous Mexican ancestors experimented with ways to extract and harness color from natural materials around them. Cochineal, a tiny bug harvested from the paddles of cactus which produces a bright red pigment, was more expensive than gold when Spanish colonizers brought it back to the Old World!
I love using a variety of bright, expressive colors in my work to not only attract the attention of viewers, but also perpetuate the passion for color that my Mexican ancestors have spent millennia on.
Are there specific associations towards color in your work?
Because it is necessary to address colorism when exploring issues of race, ethnicity, and undocumented immigration, skin color in my work is very important. I often spend hours mixing skin tones, and have found that building up figures with multiple layers of transparent browns works best to create the illusion of form.
Fueron Bautizados, reductive relief woodcut, 22"x15", 2020